The Three Most Wanted (5 page)

5

SCAPEGOAT

FACILITY MAJOR ‘MASTERMINDS’ BREAKOUT

Early this morning Major Lucas Everington, Commandant of Greater Salperton EGD Facility, was arrested on suspicion of masterminding the mass breakout from his Facility last week. A spokesperson for EGD Security today confirmed that the escape—the worst in the 80 year history of the EGD—could not have happened without inside help.

‘All evidence currently points to the Commandant,’ the spokesperson said, ‘who is known to have had several secret meetings with reAssignee Margaret Verrall—currently on the run after being convicted of the twin charges of
Personal Practice of Superstition
and
Inciting and Promoting Superstition in the General Population
and also wanted on a charge of
Unauthorized Departure from an EGD Facility
. The Major has not yet entered a plea, but it is expected that...   
Cont
. p.4

“Damn,” I said softly.

“What?” asked Jon.

“They’re trying to pin it on the Major.”

“Huh?”

“The escape. He’s been arrested.”

“Told you.” Bane looked over my shoulder to read.

“I suppose he
was
ultimately in charge, but
this
is just absurd. They’re saying he ‘masterminded’ it. Listen...” I read the article aloud.

“Makes sense.” Jon shrugged. “They just want a scapegoat, don’t they? Hardly want everyone to know a few reAssignees and New Adults got around their security with a little help from the Resistance. Give all sorts of people ideas. Much less embarrassing to blame it all on one traitor on the inside. The Menace will be delighted to stab him in the back, ‘specially if it gets her off a very sticky hook.”

“I know they don’t like each other, but getting him executed for something he didn’t do seems a bit extreme. Surely she won’t say more than she has to,” I objected.

“Oh, she will. She hates him,” said Jon, starting on his meat pie.

“You sound very sure.”

“They’ve got history. Watkins told me.” Jon nodded knowingly.

Watkins was one of the only Facility guards I genuinely liked. A kind, older man, he’d almost derailed our escape with his quick wits, before persuading his fellow guard to go along with us once it was clear they were outgunned—thus avoiding needless violence. Hopefully the Menace hadn’t managed to put any of the blame for her mistakes onto him.

“I never did know why the Menace hated the Major so much,” I said.

Jon shrugged. “No, Watkins might’ve been a bit embarrassed to tell the tale to you girlies. See, the EGD have this really strict rule about officers not, er,
fraternizing
with the regular guards. Avoids a load of trouble, no doubt. Anyway, in the little country Facilities where there’s just a Major and a Captain it’s apparently pretty much the norm for them to, ah,
socialize
in bed whether or not they socialize much out of it, if you see what I mean.”

“I don’t think those two were socializing
anywhere.”

“No, well, I’m getting to that. Apparently when Major—then Captain—Everington first arrived the previous Captain had just been promoted when the old Commandant retired—you know that’s normally how they do the promotions, ’cause they try to send the officers to their local facilities?”

“Yeah, officers have very little leave, so the idea is their families can go there to see them. Like they’re going to want to.”

“As if. Well, the new Major only needed to put in three years to draw a Major’s pension—would’ve been ten years to draw a Commandant’s pension and she wasn’t prepared to hang around that long. Rumor said she was off to join the old Commandant anyway, so they weren’t going to be short of cash.

“Anyway, especially in light of that, she takes one look at Everington and goes,
they’ve sent me a child!
He takes one look at her and goes,
old hag, not with a barge pole,
and nothing whatsoever happens. Three years pass, she retires, he’s promoted to Major—Commandant before he’s even thirty, not bad—and they send him a fresh young Captain to be girl’s warden. Watkins swears she was a great deal thinner and quite a bit prettier ten years ago. So Major Everington perks right up, and she obviously thinks she’s landed right on her feet with him, only he’s a bit gentlemanly and wants to get to know her first, which is where it all goes horribly wrong.

“’Cause he takes such a violent dislike to her he can’t be induced to go along with the, er, norm. So she follows him around for about three months like a horny puppy, really embarrassing for everyone, Watkins said. She was pretty much begging him to go to bed with her. One day, he snaps and turns around to her right there in the mess in front of all the guards and says, ‘I’m sure you’re right, my very undear Captain, that sex is just physical but unfortunately when I look at you I find myself physically unable to comply with your wishes. So sorry and all that.’”

“Well, that told her,” snorted Bane.

“
Ouch,”
I said.

“Yeah. Watkins truly thought she was going to pull out her weapon and try to plug him five or six times right there and then, but fortunately for her she didn’t.”

“Yeah, I reckon even in EGD Security killing your superior is frowned upon.”

“Nah, Watkins didn’t think she’d have managed it. Thought the Major would’ve killed her. He’s pretty fast on the draw, apparently. Faster than her.”

“Oh. Killing his subordinates wouldn’t make him very popular with his superiors, though.”

“Well, he got away with it later,” said Jon, swallowing another mouthful of pie.

“
What?”

“Watkins didn’t tell you that one either? The Major caught a guard doing something to a boy—Watkins wouldn’t say exactly what, so it must’ve been bad—in the Major’s garden, of all places.”

I shuddered. Was that why the Major didn’t want boys anywhere near his precious garden? He'd positively freaked out when Jon had stepped into his private enclave for a few seconds. And considering what he’d done to Finchley for assaulting me…

“I’m guessing that was the bad idea of all bad ideas on the guard’s part.”

“Oh yeah. The Major had the guy brought to his office later for punishment. Next thing they know, the guard’s dead on the floor with his throat cut. Self-defense, according to the Major. Said the guy got the knife and came at him.”

“The Major was trying to cut one of his improvised tattoos onto the guard’s face?”

“Expect so. But it ended with the Major using a paper knife on the guard’s throat. No question about it, rather messy, Watkins said. He reckoned the Major was telling the truth. He just also reckoned Everington could probably have disarmed the stupid beast without killing him—if he hadn’t lost his temper. Anyway, given that the Major was a young officer with a clean record and a lot of years service left in him? There was no trouble about it.”

“Lucky for the Menace she didn’t try anything, then. I take it they just settled down to hate each other ever since?”

“That’s about it. So we can safely assume that now she’ll tell the Powers That Be anything and everything she can think of and make up the rest, ‘specially with her own neck on the line.”

Bane snorted again. “When they take that guy to pieces it’s going to be a day of poetic justice all right!”

“I don’t know about justice,” I couldn’t help saying. “If they dismantled him for being a Facility Commandant all these years that might be justice. But for something he hasn’t done? That’s
in
justice.”

“You’re overthinking it, Margo. He’d have seen you all dead. Let him rot.”

My hand crept to the scars on my forehead, hidden—or mostly hidden—under a carefully applied layer of makeup. Hadn’t mentioned to either of them precisely how I’d acquired that particular injury. I looked again at the picture. The Major’s hands were cuffed behind his back, the Facility in the background. They’d taken a photographer along just to arrest him. A show trial from the very beginning.

“Shame it wasn’t the Menace,” said Jon. “Oh well, did I hear you buying cakes?”

“Bane has them.” I folded the page and slipped it into my pocket.

Skirting an area of hillier forest, we reached another town four days later, buying more food with a blessed absence of any trouble, then heading on. So many backpackers, and who paid attention to photos of fugitives who were supposed to be in the Spanish department with the Resistance?

Three days later and the sun was dropping below the trees, but we were still walking. All my dressings had been gone for some time now, leaving expanses of red, wrinkly, but thoroughly attached, skin, and Bane called later and later stops.

Jon tripped and went down, almost taking Bane with him. Usually back to his feet in moments, he sat back on his heels, rubbing his knees and panting.

“Aren’t we stopping yet?”

“We can go a bit further.” Bane checked his phone. “Still some daylight left.”

“It’s dusk! I can hear the wildlife, I’m not
deaf!”

“Just get up, Jon.”

“Or
what?”

“
Or we’ll leave you for the wolves!”

“Bane,
don’t talk nonsense!”
With effort, I stopped myself from saying anything harsher. Jon wasn’t the only exhausted one. “Look, don’t you think it is time to stop? We’ve a long way to go. Hadn’t we better pace ourselves?”

“Great idea, only we really want to reach the Alps before the more deserted passes are impassable. And we... ah... we’re not going quite as fast as I’d hoped.” His eyes flicked guiltily to Jon—harsh words already regretted?

“Oh.” Hadn’t even thought about Alpine passes. “How long have we got?”

“Only Mother Nature knows for sure. If we reach them by the beginning of October, we should be safe. Much later and we’ll probably have to take a main road or even a road tunnel.”

“No! There’ll be checkpoints! We
can’t.”

“Or wait out the winter in the French forest?”

I bit my lip. We were underequipped, we couldn’t get food from stalls—no one camped out in midwinter. We’d never survive.

“We
have
to reach the passes in time!” I tried to steady my voice. “Come on, Jon, we can go a bit further. We’ve
got to.”

“Point taken.”

Jon dragged himself to his feet and we moved on. But it wasn’t long before there was a crack and a yelp as our “fast” pace let another branch or tree stump slip past the swing of his stick. A smack as he kicked the object in frustration...

“Ow! What kind of rock is that?” A tap tap as he sized it up with his stick. “Like a stalagmite!”

I glanced back, as Jon rubbed his knee. A narrow, square stone post stuck up from the ground to about knee height, coated in lichen and with a bit of creeper up one side. Rough patches marred each side about a third of the way down. Something familiar about the damage...

“Hey, it had crosspieces... it’s a cross!” I moved around to the other side and found a name carved into it. “It’s a gravestone.”

“What on earth is it doing out here?” said Bane.

Jon dropped guiltily to his un-bashed knee and ran gentle hands over the recent target of his frustration. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” Speaking to God or the stone’s owner, or perhaps both. I put a hand on his shoulder.

“You didn’t know.”

“
Margo
...” Something in Bane’s voice made me look around at once. “
Look
...”

I followed his gaze and for a moment saw nothing but forest in the dimming light. Then from the jumble of undergrowth shapes sprang to the fore—stone posts, hundreds of them,
thousands
—desecrated crosses running in compact ranks away through the trees, lichen-coated and overgrown.

“Oh my...” My neck and scalp tingled as all my hair tried to stand on end.

“What is it?” Jon lurched back to his feet.

“There’s more of them.”

“A lot more.” Bane still sounded strangled. “
Thousands
.”

“What is this place?”

“It’s a cemetery!” said Bane. “From one of the Great Wars of the Twentieth Century. Gravestones weren’t exempted from the Religious Symbols Act, were they?”

“Even though the forest had grown over them.
Libera nos
, there’s so
many
.”

“They killed off half the young men in Europe,” said Bane grimly.

“At least they saved what was left of the Jews in the end.”

“Yeah, for the EuroGov to try to finish off! Don’t people
learn?
Sacrifice half a generation to overthrow an evil power and then just sit back and let another one in.
Doh!”